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CUBAN INDEPENDENCE. 



SPEECH 



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HON. JOHN L. WILSON. 



OF WASHINGTON, 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



Saturday, April, 16, 1898. 



WASHINGTON. 



I898. 



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SPEECH 



HON. JOHN L. WILSON, 



The Senate having under consideration the joint resolution (S. R. 149) for 
the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that 
the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the 
Island of Cuba, and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and 
Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the 
land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into 
effect- 
Mr. WILSON said: 

Mr. President: I had hoped that the resolutions of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations might be adopted by the Senate with- 
out debate. It was my earnest desire again to witness that mag- 
nificent spectacle of the representatives of the people, without 
regard to party, voting to maintain the national honor with the 
same calm dignity with which they voted fifty millions for the 
national defense. 

Mr. President, the results of that act were worth all the cost. 
It said to all the world that the American people were united. It 
said that all sectionalism had been abolished. It said, ' ' No North, 
no South, no East, no West, but one country, one flag, one people." 
I had hoped for immediate action. I had hoped to see the Sen- 
ate and House hold up the hands of the President, "even until 
the going down of the sun and until Amalek and his people 
should have been discomforted with the edge of the sword." 

Mr. President, I regret, as this debate has progressed, that an 
apparent effort should have been made to obtain some partisan 
advantage from such a serious issue as that of war. " Our country 
first and party afterwards " is the motto that should guide all true 
patriots. In the last one hundred years no war has Leen declared 
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or retrained from without criticism, usually unjust, upon those 
who have had the responsibility of waging it. 

In 1870 France, with the cry " On to Berlin! " and without prepa- 
ration, rushed headlong into war; and Alsace and Lorraine stand 
as monuments to her folly. But yesterday Greece clamored for 
war, and her Government was forced into it without adequate 
preparation and with an army and navy that had nothing to fight 
with but the remembrance of the glories of Salamis, Marathon, 
and Lepanto; and it took the combined force of Europe to main- 
tain her integrity as a nation. Mr. President, what we needed 
was adequate preparation; less oratory and more powder; less 
rhetoric and more rams. 

I am not versed in— nor do I care for— academic discussions of 
so-called international law. Divesting it of all subtleties and 
applying the principles of a sound common sense to this question, 
it must be acknowledged that the United States has grave ground 
of complaint against Spain. It is not that Spain has maintained a 
nuisance at our doors; it is not that we have been forced at an 
enormous expense to maintain our neutrality; it is not the fact of 
her centuries of misrule in Cuba, culminating in a barbarous and 
cruel war. It is all of these together that make the situation intol- 
erable. 

When the Maine went down in the harbor of Havana, she 
carried with her the last hope of Spanish sovereignty on the Western 
Hemisphere, and the silent and sunken wreck in that harbor is the 
harbinger of liberty and independence to the insurgents of Cuba. 

Mr. President, I have heard much in this debate of the cost of 
war, and that this, though a powerful, was a peace-loving nation. 
No one has greater admiration for the marvelous development and 
growth of the American people than 1. No one has greater admi- 
ration for their business acumen, activity, and enterprise, and no 
one more highly values their importance. The point is often made 
here and elsewhere that we must not disturb business, must not 
interfere with trade. There is more to deal with in the life of a 
nation than business or trade. There is patriotism, love of coun- 
try, honor, and virtue— things that money can not make and 
money can not buy. What is it, as we go forth from this Chain- 

3252 



ber and see the flag floating above us, that causes our hearts to 
beat stronger? Is it because we have become rich and powerful 
under its folds? I think hot. When I see it there. I see no dol- 
lar marks on its broad stripes. I do not see the mctto of the 
epicure — "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow wo 
die." "When I look I see, if anything, the picture of Washington, 
marching from defeat at Long Island to victory at Trenton, going 
from misery and starvation at Valley Forge to glorious triumph 
at Yorktown. I see the triumphs of John Paul Jones, of Perry, 
and Decatur. I see the grave and patient face of Lincoln, sur- 
rounded by all that mighty host that went forth to battle for con- 
stitutional liberty and that men might be free. 

Mr. President, it is respect and honor for our flag and the prin- 
ciples it stands for that has made this country one of the great 
nations of the earth. 

The Constitution of the United States imposes upon Congress 
the right to declare war. And while I wotild not shift upon any 
man, no matter how high his station, the responsibilities in which 
I should share, speaking for myself alone, if I could have my 
way, I would lay aside all other resolutions and cast my vote for 
a direct declaration of war. And I would follow that declaration 
with a vote to give to the President of the United States the money 
to make it effective, that we might wipe out the foul insult to our 
flag in the harbor of Havana. 

Since the night of that unfortunate tragedy, if Spam had de- 
nounced the act and hunted down the assassins, meting out to 
them punishment for their crime, some avenue might have been 
left open to maintain an honorable peace. But in place of investi- 
gation we have had a shameful and self-convicting farce. In the 
place of honorable amend, we are now brought face to face with 
a foul slander upon the dead and living heroes, and tho Spanish 
prime minister, in his official capacity, posts the officers and men 
of the Maine, both living and dead, as cowards, poltroons, and 
tricksters. In the name of the American Navy and in the name 
of her heroes of the past and of to-day, I denounce the foal slander. 

Mr. President, Spain reached the height of her glory during a 

past age. Unwise and wasteful in her day of power arid prosper- 
3253 



6 

ity, •when her splendor dazzled the world, she stands to-day, with- 
out art, without literature, without science, and without hope, a 
bankrupt and ruined nation. There can be no glory in war over 
such a carcass. But we shall have war; not a war of conquest 
nor aggression, not war for territorial aggrandizement, but war 
on behalf of liberty and humanity. 

Mr. President, the issue that confronts us is momentous. But I 
do not doubt but that the representatives of the people will meet 
it with calmness and dignity, and work out its solution with a 
high sense of justice and honor, and when history shall speak of 
that nation which is greatest among the nations of the earth, she 
will say: 

Each of the nations around you has fought for her country and line, 
But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not thine. 
Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed; 
But blessed is she among nations who dared to be strong for the rest. 

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